Natalie took the news with the solemn gravity of a child who knew she was being entrusted with something important and intended to rise to it magnificently.
Rafael had imagined several possibilities on the walk back to their suite. Excitement. Confusion. Questions. A dramatic declaration that she required time to process such life-altering political developments. Natalie was, after all, their daughter. There was always the risk that she would respond with entirely too much intelligence in too small a body.
Instead, she blinked at them from where she sat on the carpet in the nursery sitting room, surrounded by an arrangement of toy horses, colored blocks, and one decisively dismembered plush lion that had apparently lost a leg during battle.
"A sibling?" she repeated.
Gregoris, seated beside her now with the same steady calm he brought to war councils and marital arguments, nodded once. "Yes."
Natalie's silver eyes widened.
